Adventures with lightweight and minimalist software for Linux

arkanoid.sed, sedtris and sokoban.sed: sed-tacular

I mentioned with minesweeper.sh that I was willing to overlook its core game in order to praise its underlying structure. I have to do that again now, and applaud three simple console arcade games that — believe it or not — are written in sed.

I am thoroughly impressed at this point. I am lucky if I can get sed to swap two characters in a single file, let alone handle collisions, rebound angles, blocked paths and shape matches. My hat is off.

All three programs play much like you might expect, although both arkanoid.sed and sokoban.sed will require you to press Enter to start, and after each command. It’s an inconvenience, but I can’t very well find fault. (sedtris, on the other hand, doesn’t need prompting.)

I should point out that these are not all by the same author, which means there is more than one high wizard of sed out there in the wild. I obviously have a lot to learn.😦